Bartholomew 06 - A Masterly Murder

by Susanna GREGORY

Bosel made an impatient sound. ‘I do not know! I did not see the person, I only heard him. And the reason I did not see him come from the churchyard was because I heard him scramble over the wall at the back and head off down those alleys instead. You will never catch him now. Did he rob you of your purse, then? Is that why you cannot give me a penny?’

  ‘No,’ said Bartholomew shortly. ‘He just gave me a nasty fright.’

  ‘I will see you after mass, then,’ called Bosel, as he left.

  Still holding the sacking that had been tossed over his head, Bartholomew opened the door to the church and walked inside. William had already laid out the sacred vessels, lit the candles and opened the great bible to the correct reading of the day. Bartholomew was suddenly horribly reminded of the week before, when Runham had come to the church to do the physician’s duties and fine him for being late.

  ‘Well, I do not have a shilling to pay any fine,’ he said irritably to William, as he walked towards the altar. ‘I did not even have a penny to give to Bosel.’

  ‘Do you want to borrow one?’ asked William, puzzled by the hostile greeting. He rummaged in his scrip. ‘I have a couple in here somewhere that I can lend you. As a friar, I have little need for worldly wealth. When can you pay me back?’

  Bartholomew tossed the sacking on to a bench, thinking that Bosel had probably been right, and that the attack had been an attempt by a thief to make off with the heavy purses all scholars were thought to possess. It had been a perfect opportunity: Bartholomew had been alone and the churchyard was free of possible witnesses. The only thing wrong with the plan was that they had picked a scholar who had forgotten his purse, and there would have been very little in it anyway.

  As the sacking hit the wooden bench, there was a heavy thump. Bartholomew gave it an angry glare, recalling that something had tugged at the back of his neck – probably a weighted rope that would hold the sacking in place long enough to allow the robber to make his escape. The physician had been lucky. In the desperate days following the plague, when food was scarce and people starved in the streets, many hungry people considered a knife under the ribs the best way to rob a victim and leave no witnesses to identify them later.

  ‘Do not leave those rags there,’ said William peevishly. ‘I came here early this morning to give the church a good clean, and I do not want bits of sacking lying all over the place.’

  ‘It looks nice,’ said Bartholomew, glancing around him and noticing that the floor had been swept, the spilled wax from the candles scraped away and the holders polished, and the desiccated flies and spiders brushed from the windowsills.

  William smiled, pleased by the compliment. The complacent grin faded when his gaze came to rest on the shrouded corpse that reclined near Wilson’s glittering tomb. ‘I only wish I could have swept that rubbish from our holy church, too.’

  ‘That is not a very friarly attitude,’ said Bartholomew. ‘But did you hear that Master Kenyngham thinks we should not have a second grisly tomb in our chancel, as Runham stipulated in his will? He says a tomb like the one Runham wants will not leave enough space for us to pray, and instead he proposes to place Runham in Wilson’s tomb – on top of his cousin.’

  William chuckled nastily. ‘I have heard that Wilson did not like Runham at all, so they will make uneasy bedfellows. Or should I say grave-fellows? That tomb is hideous – it is only right that Runham should spend eternity in the thing.’

  ‘The requiem is to be on Thursday,’ said Bartholomew. ‘At dawn.’

  ‘I hope you will not be assisting the celebrant,’ said William. ‘You will be late, and Runham will spend more time above ground than is his right.’

  ‘I am sorry about that,’ said Bartholomew. ‘It was the combination of our activities in Runham’s chambers and sleeping on the floor in Cynric’s old room.’

  William gave a reluctant smile. ‘Well, I guessed you would be late this morning anyway, because Walter took his cockerel with him when he was dismissed.’

  ‘That thing is more unreliable than I am. It is just as likely to oversleep as I am.’

  ‘And even more likely to crow half the night just for the fun of it,’ agreed William. ‘I am surprised it has not ended up in the pot before now. But I have done your chores for you already. All you need to do, Matthew, is kneel with me and pray that we catch the killer of Runham without too much inconvenience to the College. But first, you can fold up that sacking that is cluttering my clean church. What is it anyway? Where did it come from?’

  Bartholomew told him what had happened, and then spent some time persuading the friar that there was no point in waking every household in the wretched runnels and alleyways behind the church until a culprit confessed to his ignoble act.

  ‘It is good-quality stuff,’ said William, reaching out a hand to touch the cloth. ‘That poor robber did worse than leave empty-handed; he abandoned a decent piece of sacking. It would make a nice short cloak, Matthew – the kind of cloak a poor Franciscan friar might wear in the summer months to ward off evening chills.’

  ‘Would you like it?’

  ‘Me?’ asked William, as though the notion had never crossed his mind. ‘What a kind thought! I will ask Agatha to sew me …’ He faltered. Agatha had gone from Michaelhouse. ‘Well, it will make a good cloak anyway.’

  He shook the material out and something fell to the floor – a rough, shapeless bundle tied with the loop of rope that had been dropped over Bartholomew’s head. Bartholomew leaned down to retrieve it and was startled to hear the clink of metal. Curious, he untied the thin rope that held the neck of the bag and gazed in surprise at the coins that gleamed inside.

  William snatched the bundle from him and strode across to Wilson’s tomb, where the small altar provided a flat surface. He upended the bag, and he and Bartholomew gaped in astonishment at the heap of gold that glittered on the white cloth.

  Chapter 10

  TWELVE POUNDS, TWO SHILLINGS AND FOURPENCE,’ said Michael, sitting back at last, the coins set in neat piles in front of him. ‘And it is definitely part of the money stolen from Michaelhouse, because I was very familiar with the coins in the Illegh Hutch – I was its manager – and I recognise the distinctive way that several of the pieces have been clipped.’

  The Fellows – Michael, Bartholomew, William, Kenyngham, Langelee, Clippesby and Suttone – were in the conclave, sitting in the thin winter sun that streamed in through the glass windows. Ignoring some of his colleagues’ anxieties that belts would need to be tightened and economies made if Michaelhouse wanted to repay its debts, Kenyngham had ordered that fires must continue to be lit in the hall and conclave, and had given the cooks leave to buy their regular supplies. Bartholomew agreed wholeheartedly, thinking that a cold College with no food was not going to present itself as something worth fighting for. So, a small fire flickered gaily in the conclave, while the furniture, rugs and cushions pillaged by Runham for his personal use were back in their rightful places.

  ‘And someone just gave this to you?’ asked Clippesby again, disbelief etched into every line of his face. ‘Someone handed it over, just like that?’

  ‘Basically,’ said Bartholomew.

  Clippesby continued to regard Bartholomew with such rank suspicion that the physician began to wonder whether the man considered him responsible for the theft from Runham’s room. Bartholomew thought Clippesby himself seemed ill at ease and anxious that morning: his hair stood up in peculiar clumps all over his head, as though he had been tearing at it, and his wild eyes were redrimmed and more glassy than usual. Bartholomew could not decide whether the Dominican’s odd appearance was the result of grief over Runham, guilt because he was the murderer, or merely the incipient madness that evidently clawed at the edges of his consciousness.

  ‘Recovering this money is very fortunate,’ said Langelee cheerfully. ‘Perhaps we should send Bartholomew to mass every morning, to see how much more we can retrieve.’

  ‘I do not like it,’ said Kenyngham. ‘I do not l
ike the notion that the killer of poor Master Runham approached Matthew so brazenly and handed him this gold.’

  ‘How do you know it was the killer?’ asked Langelee, taking a gulp from a goblet of wine he had somehow contrived to have with him. He did not sound unduly concerned that a murderer was at large, no doubt because he was confident he could best any would-be attacker, unlike his weaker and less able colleagues.

  ‘Because it is obvious that whoever stole the money also murdered Runham,’ said William, regarding the philosopher and his wine with a glower that was partly disapproval and partly envy.

  ‘It is not obvious at all,’ said Suttone with quiet reason. ‘It is likely, but it is also possible that someone smothered Runham and fled, and then a second person took the gold when he saw it had been left unguarded.’

  William said nothing, but stared ahead of him with the stony expression on his face that he always wore when he knew someone else was right and he was not prepared to admit it.

  Kenyngham sighed. ‘This is all very distasteful, but we must review where we were precisely at eight o’clock on Friday night. William and Paul were at compline at the Franciscan Friary, while Master Suttone and I were doing the same at St Michael’s Church.’

  ‘I was with the Chancellor,’ said Michael. ‘Which leaves only Matt, Langelee and Clippesby.’

  ‘I was at Trumpington,’ said Bartholomew. ‘I went to visit my sister.’

  ‘But it was raining on Friday,’ pounced Langelee. ‘Why did you walk so far in the wet?’

  ‘The guards on the town gate confirm that Matt left around sunset and that he did not return until the following day,’ said Michael. ‘He was not in Cambridge when Runham was murdered.’

  Bartholomew gazed at him uncertainly, fairly sure that the guards had not observed him leaving – their attention had been on a family of tinkers who had been trying to enter the city. But Michael spoke with such authority that no one asked why he had not mentioned such an important fact before.

  ‘What about you, Ralph?’ asked Kenyngham of Langelee. ‘Tell us again what happened to you that night.’

  ‘I walked,’ said Langelee with a careless shrug. ‘I went to the wharves, where I stood on Dame Nichol’s Hythe for a long time and watched the river flow past.’

  ‘In the rain?’ asked Michael, using the same point that Langelee had raised against Bartholomew.

  ‘I was in the watchman’s shelter,’ said Langelee. ‘He was not there because there were no barges to guard that night. And when I grew restless, I went into the town.’ He glared defiantly at William. ‘I visited a whore.’

  ‘Which one?’ asked Michael before William could respond. ‘And what time?’

  ‘I have no idea of the time,’ said Langelee. ‘But the whore’s name was Yolande de Blaston.’

  ‘Yolande de Blaston?’ echoed Kenyngham, deeply shocked. ‘But she is the wife of one of the carpenters! Are you saying that you compounded the sin of lust with that of adultery?’

  ‘I am one of her regulars,’ said Langelee, in the tone of a man who did not know what the fuss was about. ‘And Blaston is more than happy to see her earnings support their ever growing brood. They have at least nine children.’

  ‘You seduced the mother of nine children?’ whispered Kenyngham, his faced flushed with dismay. He crossed himself vigorously, clasped his hands, and began to pray.

  ‘I hate it when he does that,’ muttered Langelee, finally discomfited by Kenyngham’s horror. ‘Yolande is always more than happy with what I pay her and, being a prostitute, she is fair game for a lonely man. But Kenyngham always makes me feel as though I have done something sordid and dirty.’

  ‘Perhaps he is right,’ boomed William. ‘And what do you mean by “always”? Is this kind of thing a regular occurrence?’

  ‘What time did you leave Yolande?’ asked Michael quickly. ‘Was it later than midnight?’

  ‘We fell asleep,’ said Langelee. ‘I was tired – drained by my unpleasant confrontation with Runham – and we both slept until dawn, after we had—’

  ‘And you, Clippesby?’ asked Michael hurriedly, seeing Kenyngham’s eyes snap open in alarm at the prospect of more lustful revelations. ‘Tell us what you did.’

  ‘I went to vespers,’ said Clippesby. ‘That was around sunset. Then I wandered around the Market Square, watching the traders pack away their goods.’

  ‘So that is what Dominicans do for a good time, is it?’ asked William, coolly judgemental. ‘They watch merchants pore over their worldly goods and their filthy gold.’

  ‘And then?’ asked Michael, ignoring William.

  ‘And then I heard the bell ring for compline, but I did not feel like attending another office.’

  ‘You “did not feel like” worshipping God?’ exploded William in outrage.

  Clippesby fixed him with a glower of his own, and the full brunt of a gaze from his mad eyes was sufficient to silence the Franciscan. ‘No, I did not. I lingered near the Market Square, watching the mystery plays by candlelight outside St Mary’s Guildhall. I was there for hours, and I do not think I was in the College before nine. So, it could not have been me who killed Master Runham,’ he concluded triumphantly.

  ‘Which mystery play did you see?’ asked Michael.

  Clippesby shrugged. ‘I do not recall.’

  ‘Did you speak to anyone there who might be able to corroborate your story?’

  Clippesby thought for a moment and then shook his head. ‘Not that I remember.’

  ‘No one?’ pressed Michael.

  Clippesby frowned. ‘I spoke to a woman – that merchant’s daughter who looks like a horse. She was there, I think.’

  ‘This is taking us nowhere,’ said Kenyngham, rising from his seat near the fire. ‘All you are doing is raising accusations against your fellow scholars – accusations that are based on suspicion and assumptions. This meeting is closed. I will take the money that God has seen fit to restore to us, and put it in a secure place. The rest of you should go to the church and pray for forgiveness for harbouring such uncharitable thoughts against each other.’

  The Fellows began to drift out of the conclave to the yard below. As he returned from his room with a bible, and prepared to inflict himself on the students who had gathered in the hall, William announced in a loud, hoarse whisper to Michael that he would enquire after Gray and Deynman’s whereabouts on the night of Runham’s murder.

  ‘Is that wise?’ asked Suttone doubtfully, watching the Franciscan stride purposefully towards the hall, scattering students reckless enough to be in his path. ‘Only the good Father is not very subtle, and Gray seems a clever sort of lad. I do not know that William has the necessary skills for cunning interrogation.’

  ‘Gray and Deynman could not have killed Runham,’ said Bartholomew. ‘They were up all night scribing a copy of Corpus Juris Civilis for Runham, and the fifteen students who were helping them are prepared to vouch for their whereabouts the whole time.’

  ‘I think I had better accompany William,’ said Suttone, clearly believing that innocence or guilt had nothing to do with the ethics of allowing the Franciscan fanatic loose on the students.

  He hurried away, and Michael took Bartholomew’s arm to lead him across the yard towards the gate. ‘Deynman would have let something slip by now, had he had anything to do with the crime. He does not have the guile to keep his guilt hidden.’

  ‘That is certainly true,’ said Bartholomew. ‘Tell me, Brother, did the guards really see me leave the town the night Runham was killed?’

  Michael grinned. ‘Of course not. They are so notoriously unobservant that I did not even bother to ask. But we know you are not the killer, and I did not want to waste time by having the others muse that most innocent men do not walk along outlaw-infested highways on dark, rainy nights and then sit thinking in graveyards until they rouse their sister’s households at the witching hour.’

  Bartholomew glanced up at the hall, where William could be heard s
houting for Gray and Deynman. ‘I do not like the thought of letting him question my students. He will have some of the younger ones confessing to all sorts of things they did not do.’

  ‘Questioning them will keep him busy today,’ said Michael, opening the gate and ushering Bartholomew into the lane. ‘And better busy than trying to “help” by launching some enquiry of his own that may damage our chances of catching the killer. Suttone is there, anyway. He will not let William harm anyone.’

  ‘True. If everyone were as rational and compassionate as Suttone, Michaelhouse would be a much nicer place to live in.’

  ‘But also a much more dull one,’ said Michael, pulling on Bartholomew’s arm. ‘Being Master of the College of saintly friars will be no fun for me at all.’

  ‘You intend to stand, then, when Kenyngham resigns again?’

  ‘Of course,’ replied Michael, opening the gate. ‘As I am sure you know I am the best Michaelhouse has to offer. It would be remiss of me not to do my moral duty.’

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Bartholomew, not liking the way he was being steered in the direction Michael wanted him to go.

  ‘To catch our killer,’ said Michael cheerfully. ‘And we will not do it by lurking in Michaelhouse all day. We have people to see.’

  The first person on Michael’s list was Cynric, dismissed so callously from Michaelhouse after many years of faithful service. While Bartholomew knew the Welshman well enough to be sure he would not stoop to smothering Runham, there was no denying that he had the skills to enter the College undetected, commit the crime and leave again with no one the wiser, not to mention the fact that his life as a soldier – before he had become Bartholomew’s book-bearer – meant he had killed more men than the physician liked to contemplate.

  Cynric was just returning from the market, arm in arm with his new wife Rachel. He beamed with pleasure when he saw Bartholomew, although Rachel did not seem quite so delighted.

  ‘Have you come to ask him to help you tackle all these University deaths?’ she demanded immediately. ‘Because if so, I would rather you invited someone else. I do not want my husband chasing killers on your behalf.’